Defense of Bosque Panul and the Construction of Collective Territorial Knowledge for Alternative Land-Use Planning Proposals: La Florida, 2006–2020
Abstract
This research is set in the municipality of La Florida, Metropolitan Region, where Panul — the last native forest within the urban area of Santiago — is located. Given the explosive and unregulated expansion of the city, the piedmont forests of the capital have been severely threatened and damaged. Likewise, their destruction through the construction of real estate projects has had a negative impact on the diverse ecosystem services these forests provide to the population.
In response to urban encroachment, the community organized — first through the social movement Red por la Defensa de la Precordillera and other similar groups — halted the imminent destruction of this green lung, managing to stop a major real estate development project in 2012 and pressuring the relevant authorities to influence Territorial Planning Instruments (IPT). Under the premise that the land is private property, state bodies and institutions have denied its protection. However, through community defense, various ways of protecting, thinking about, and feeling connected to this territory have emerged, giving rise to forms of collective action and work that have woven together valuable territorial knowledge worth understanding.
This defense can open the door to proposals for socio-ecological relationships and alternative Land-Use Planning (OT) between the piedmont of the region and the city of Santiago — especially with Bosque Panul — developed by its own inhabitants and defenders.
To carry out this research, a qualitative methodology was used, allowing for an in-depth exploration of the different thoughts and feelings of those who defend Bosque Panul firsthand during the period 2006–2020. Primary data collection techniques included in-depth interviews, and secondary techniques involved gathering press and movement-produced media, subsequently analyzed through discourse and content analysis respectively.
Ultimately, this research can contribute — from a local, territorial perspective — to understandings of the diverse relationships that develop with the territory, valuing community action processes as an alternative form of organization and knowledge for formulating land-use planning proposals, or as alternatives in the relationships with and for the territory, as an extension of our bodies.
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